Prince Bush
Endemic to Mill Creek
That seven-inch, crayfish smell—
Below the rotten egg
Of limestone,
Independent like the eye
From the other eye
At night, of no brain,
But a mind, whose mind’s
Lurch forward is fall’s
And spring’s—
Had a thick oil
That swam backward
And was drunk—
Swaddled their eggs
And preyed. Everyone,
Underwater, did—
Most of it inedible.
Orange, and not
A brilliant orange,
An orange you learn’s
The darkest end of orange
Lest you take it,
It pinches you.
It’s uncomfortable.
It may even hurt.
Does it hurt?
Not endangered—
It’s summer, then.
Prince Bush reads “Endemic to Mill Creek”
Prince Bush is a poet from Nashville, Tennessee with poems in Cherry Tree, Northwest Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. He’s a Truman Capote fellow at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop for poetry.